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Topic: New computer (Read 603 times)

I went with my wife to PC World to buy her a new computer for her birthday and asked if they had any with Linux already installed. The woman assistant said she had never heard of it.. She showed us a nice one with Windows 7 installed and said Windows 8 will be free when it comes out and all the icons are down the left side for convenience, which I said is copied from Linux Ubuntu. I said I can uninstall windows and install Linux Ubuntu in its place. She asked advice from others who said they don't know why I should want to uninstall windows. I said if I wanted windows there's no windows disk if anything happens to the data or hard disk whereas Linux Ubuntu is free and a superior system. They looked a little bewildered as their expertise did not have any knowledge of Linux. Their training was only to sell windows and Apple computers and had no knowledge of Linux or the distros . So we left the shop and I found a really nice one on eBay that should last her a few years. I loaded Ubuntu on it and have not had any problems. No all day defrags, no virus killers, no lengthy waits for shutdown updates, no crashes, etc.

Oh come now .. some of them are tekkies, granted it doesn't seem like many, and granted they don't seem to have much training, and generally no training that involves Linux, but you can't tar them *all* with the same brush! I spoke to a guy in there once who'd heard of Linux, albeit he thought it was the name of a cartoon Penguin.

If you really want some fun, hit it on a Sunday when the part-timers / students are manning the store ...

[that said, I've got to say from a price perspective, if I'm buying a new PC, I'll probably buy it from PC world and *never* via Amazon, simply because of the returns ability / policy. My current laptop is ~ 1 yr and came from PC World, price was good and got it over the counter. Previous attempt to purchase via Amazon left me £500 out of pocket, without a machine for quite some time and resorting to trading standards to get my money back !!!]

I've always felt the price of their systems and laptops were reasonable but they make a killing on accessories as for the staff I know very little but what goldtopia says comes as no surprise to me after all is said and done they're paid to sell and lets be honest it's still a windows world

But thumbs up to goldtopia for making a stand and leaving them in no doubt they lost a sale because they ignore Linux

Graeme

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If you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs, then you're not quite grasping the situation